On the May 3 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, Rev. Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, denounced the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R. 1592) -- which was passed by the House of Representatives on May 3 -- because the bill extends hate crime protection to people who are victimized because of their gender identity or sexual orientation -- or as Sheldon put it, “behavior-based sexual orientation.” Sheldon cited “the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association,” where one can “see the 30 listed -- almost perversions kinds of things about having what is sexually arousing you, like, you're talking about a man who dresses as a woman, talking about the man who's a she-male and ... takes hormones to create breasts and no hair on his chest, and -- or the man who exposes himself.”

The House passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 by a margin of 237-180. According to a May 3 New York Times article, President Bush is expected to veto it. The article reports the bill would “extend 'hate crime' protection to people who are victimized because of their sexuality” and “make it easier for federal authorities to take part in hate-crime investigations if local investigators are unable or unwilling to pursue them, and it would make federal money available to offset 'extraordinary expenses' associated with such inquiries.”

As Media Matters for America noted, on the October 11, 2005, broadcast of Today's Issues, a program on the Christian broadcasting network American Family Radio, Sheldon suggested that Christian therapists believe exorcism is the only effective technique to “release” a person from the homosexual “lifestyle.”

From the May 3 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck:

SHELDON: This bill goes in to the '64 Civil Rights Act and adds two new categories, that is, the category of sexual orientation and the category of gender identity.

REP. MARK KIRK (R-IL): Also disability.

SHELDON: When you go to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association and you see the 30 listed -- almost perversions kinds of things about having what is sexually arousing you, like, you're talking about a man who dresses as a woman, talking about the man who's a she-male has -- takes hormones to create breasts and no hair on his chest, and -- or the man who exposes himself.

BECK: Reverend, Reverend, Reverend, hang on.

SHELDON: Do you understand the point?

BECK: No, I don't think I really do, because my point --

SHELDON: The point is this, Glenn. The point is simply this: that when you include that kind of behavior as special protection, which the '64 Civil Rights has rightly done for race and creed and ethnicity and the others - it's needed for those things, but not for behavior-based sexual orientation.

BECK: Congressman, do you want to respond to that?